In 2008 when we started working on MST we’re surprised that there’s no service that can search in spoken video content, search for a scene or a part from a video by typing a word and get to the moment the word said, all video search till now is almost only using title and tags. Which is not the right way.

Imagine searching the web for titles, in Google when you type a word “technology” you’d get a list of pages that the word “technology” is written in them, not just the title of the page, in Google and typical search engines in general you search the content.

– Why not in Video?

April, 2008: Let’s do it!!!
July, 2008: Some results!
September 2008: Google launches something called Gaudi that almost did the same as we did, depressing, it was really depressing to be crushed in a second, why Google? what unlucky coincidence made you start the same thing as a small team in Cairo?

Luckily, Google Gaudi was shutdown.

…Ironically a year later QREO was shutdown.

Fast forward to September, 2015

QREO is back, and still no decent video search engine, you still have to watch full videos to get to the parts. 5 years still nothing, okay let’s get back on it.
MST is ready by April, 2016 and now it’s available for testing by anyone.

What’s our goal?
Make online video searchable.

Who’d find this goal interesting and useful?
Every video creator and every video viewer.Creators: will get their videos organized, searchable, targeted audience and new audience that wouldn’t open the video if not for this part.Viewers: Will save ages searching for scene in huge amount of videos and easily discover video content.

MST is service that makes your videos searchable by text, try it here, but how you get the most out of your videos using MST?

MST is an advanced way to discover videos, unlike YouTube search, MST find the word said in a video, not just by video title and tags.

So, you’ve a great YouTube channel or you’re just starting with one.

1. Getting targeted audience
When a user looking for a certain topic in the videos, titles and tags aren’t the best way, they can’t capture the videos topics. Using MST users will find the part they’re looking for, even if your video title or tags aren’t mentioning this topic.

2. Getting More ViewsYour video title and tags don’t make it for a user search for “Health”, your video is talking about a totally another topic, but the video mentions “Health” with information that’s vital for the user.
Here are some views you wouldn’t get without MST!

3. Finding hidden content = getting more subscribers
Your channel/video wouldn’t be found by user if it wasn’t for MST, now what? you’re channel had been discovered and you got another subscriber!

4. You’re helping in organizing your content and Internet video!
Just like searching for a topic on the Internet, imagine there are no search engines, and you’ve millions of videos to watch a 10-sec part? MST is a search engine for videos

Go to https://mst.qreo.net and submit your video/channel now while it’s free and be one of our first beloved video creators.

Okay, so many people asking and many others wondering how MST (the video search technology) works.

And No…

It isn’t using YouTube captions, it doesn’t use speech to text and not transcribed videos.

The secret with MST is me, I listen to every video and write down every word said, the average time I need for every video is 50% of the videos time, if the video is 10 min long, it takes me 5 min to add it to the database. How? I play the video in 2x speed and listen carefully, I can write down 218 words per minute, the fastest human can write is 217 words per minute (applause for me? Thank You!), this fast video sounds like chipmunks, add to it the stupidly unsettling sound of keyboards keys on this speed, these are a hell of voices coming out if you’re listening from outside!

But these voices start doing something interesting…

Of course it’s a daunting task to do alone, especially with long videos, one night I was writing down this video, and something interesting happened, I saw lights, dim lights becoming brighter, sounds of chipmunks, unusual sound other than the videos’ sounds! I checked the lights and I saw a little cute fairy, almost fits my palm, she said her name is Katie and she eats rainbows. And that was it I thought I need some sleep and went to bed this night with about 10 videos to write down left.

Next morning…

I went to complete the job, but something weird happened, I saw 8 fairies, as cute as Katie, each one is responsible for a group of keyboard keys and Katie is listening to the video and copies to them a letter-by-letter, “What Katie? What are you doing?”, I said, “Helping! you can’t do it alone anyway”, Katie said with a very stupid poker face.

Weeks passed, Katie and her friends are working, I’m building the website, Katie told me that I should get some fund, which I immediately dismissed, but after long work I found she’s right, not right about the fund exactly, the fund will get attention of people, which we’re struggling to get, we want people to use MST, Photon and the APIs. So, we started an Indiegogo campaign yesterday, hoping that some people will use the service and Katie and her friends see the fruits of their work! (And rainbows are really expensive to buy! they don’t accept money, I pay in rainbows)

Many behind the scenes fun stories happened while we’re working that we might tell some day, but in the meantime keep in mind that MST is built by fairies, and they can get reeeaaallly furious, so, use MST, share it with your friends and contribute to the campaign!

P.S:
Okay, nobody asked how MST works, but for the sake of the story, you know.

We’re glad to announce Photon’s new version 0.9 with some new neat features and many bug fixes.

What’s new in version 0.9?
– You can draw the Selection Area as a circle
– Screenshot for a single window – Press Alt+PrntScr
– Photos and videos by default saved in Photon folder
– Ability to set an Outline for the text (Show us your Memes NOW!)
– OCR service is continuously improved on the server side
– Ability to move the text box

Bug Fixes:
– Textbox would crash in some cases
– Many under-the-hood improvements
– Bought a new coffee machine

At QREO we’re overwhelmed with the number of traffic and the number of positive reviews created in the last few days about Photon by Softpedia, PC Advisor, SOFTZone (Spanish!) and much more, Thank you all for your support and feedback!

There’re some unannounced tips for Photon (Easter eggs :-D)

Update Checker
Right-click on Photon icon in the tray bar, go to About > Check for updates, tune-in many updates are coming!

Keyboard ShortcutsU – uploads the current shot immediatelyW – Opens the share barG – Search for the shot on Google ImagesP – Prints the current shotC – Copy the current shot, for use in applications like Photoshop or even copy directly to a Facebook post or message, just press ‘C’ and paste in your Facebook post.S – Save the current shot, next update pressing ‘S’ will save the image automatically without the ‘Save As’ window.O – For OCRR – to record and stopQ – Minimize to tray (closes the screenshot view)CTRL+Z – Guess for what?

And now my personal favorite:CTRL+E – The ‘Edit mode‘ let you interact with the system using your mouse or keyboard through the bounding rectangle, while in Edit Mode you can’t using drawing tools, press CTRL+E again to get back to Drawing Mode.

Taking and editing Screenshots should be a basic task for every computer nowadays, we need screenshot many times, from taking pictures of important pieces of information from a web browser, application or system error, sometimes it can be daunting to take the screenshot and make some edits on any photo-editing software, for most of us we need a more intuitive way to share our screenshots.

Photon takes the screenshot taking process to another level, you can write on what you see, draw, extract information and take videos with simple and easy clicks.

Start Photon and click the tray icon to start capturing, the screen will be dimmed a bit, drag with the mouse pointer to create the screenshot box, it will appear as the above image, you can upload to Photon website and get a nice link, you can share to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Vk! (Need more? drop us a line!), you can check for similar images with Google button, Print, Copy to clipboard (copy to a photo-editor for instance), save to disk, Record videos, get OCR content.

On the vertical bar, you can draw freehand, straight line, an arrow, a rectangle, use a marker to highlight important parts, you can type text on the image.

In 2006 before all the start-up jargon was too mainstream, few friends from college and I, started in an empty apartment building small and stupid software just for fun, we’ve applied to many challenges like this and other software.

By couple of years later we had stronger grasp on building software products but still relatively naive, our project was to create a method to search in spoken audio files using text input Watch the video, then life had begun and the team had separated each one in a different job in a different place and different countries.

Few of us reunited on a project to build a smart STB (Set-Top Box) or a smart satellite receiver, called IGOS, IGOS’s main value was to provide the new at that time (early 2011) smart things revolution to ordinary users using satellite receivers, satellite receivers are the main source of TV in many places around the globe, and many users have non-smart TVs, IGOS made it available for TV users to get many smart features like Apps, Browser, social sharing and ease-of-use in a competitive price.
Unfortunately, IGOS hadn’t seen the lights for the lack of funds.

On and Off, On and Off…

Now we’re back and learnt a great lesson, to start small, the time spent wasn’t wasted, we’ve learnt and gain experience and a wide range of technologies, we’ll start officially in the next few months with multiple products.

Softpedia:
Photon is an unobtrusive and intuitive program that can help you take screenshots and record desktop videos, while also providing you with a basic set of editing tools. Moreover, the application can upload images to various social networks or cloud services.

FindMySoft:
Pros:
Taking screenshots or recording the screen can be done with only a few clicks. The application provides several output options, including cloud storage and OCR. It is offered free of charge and you can have it up and running in no time.

Cons:
There are no obvious drawbacks to mention.

Channels API
The experience gained from building IGOS, showed a big gap between satellite receiver and the current era, satellite receivers lacking many basic features that can improve the users’ experience very much.
Channels API provides TV and Radio channels information and logos in a clean JSON format.

Movies API
Creating a movies info collection or movies organizer applications are not very easy, although it should be, getting movies and actors information online are either lacking some essential info or very expensive.
Movies API provides info for movies and actors plus posters for free and also in a clean JSON format.

Please, check our current landing page http://qreo.net/ and write down your feedback, how do you like the Star Wars themed homepage for a company?